


unbreakable

by marmolita



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Bad Guys Made Them Do It, Cursed with Obedience, Forced Orgasm, Forced into Incest by Third Party, Forced to Perform for an Audience, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Sibling Incest, Unwilling Arousal, rape as punishment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 12:04:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19228789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita/pseuds/marmolita
Summary: Four days' ride out of Melusine, the past catches up with Mildmay and Felix.





	unbreakable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jury/gifts).



> jury, I hope you enjoy this! I haven't written in first person for a while and it was definitely a fun challenge to try to match the style of the books. This takes place between the end of The Mirador and the beginning of Corambis.
> 
> WARNINGS: rape, obviously. Specifically, bad guys make Felix rape Mildmay. Vague references to past child sex abuse as per canon. Canonical derogatory slang for gay and disabled people. Suicidal character.

I'd known for the last couple miles that something was wrong.  The road was too quiet, and within four days' ride of Melusine there were always people coming and going.  We hadn't had no trouble so far, but I knew it was coming, I just didn't know when. Felix was in one of his moods again, where he didn't say nothing and didn't seem like he even knew where we were or what we were doing.  He was fucked up over what had happened with Gideon and Isaac Garamond, and being cast out of the Mirador and stripped of his rank and all, so I let him be. If I tried to talk to him he either ignored me or snapped at me anyway, so I'd got into the habit of letting him trail behind me, just checking over my shoulder to make sure he hadn't wandered off every so often.

So we were riding through the rocky plains north of Melusine, where there were these rolling hills -- not big ones, just big enough that when you were at the bottom of one you couldn't see over the rise.  The road was full of old cart tracks, where farmers and traders brought their goods into the city, but we hadn't seen a cart in a good few hours. I had crested a hill and was starting down the other side when I heard a noise behind me, like the jangling of the saddle bags on Felix's horse, and I thought I heard Felix say something, but with the hill between us I couldn't rightly tell.  A cold bolt of fear shot through me, and I wheeled my horse around and kicked her into a gallop, yelling Felix's name. I didn't know if his horse had shied from a snake or if spies from the Bastion were on us, but I knew it had to be something bad.

"Stop right there!" a guy yelled at me when I came flying back over the top of the hill.  I pulled up, cursing, because he had a knife to Felix's throat and Felix was just standing there like he couldn't do nothing.  I wanted to yell at Felix to hex the guy, but the next second my eyes caught on the cuffs on Felix's wrists, just the same kind they'd put on him in the Verpine.  Fuck me sideways until I cry, Felix couldn't do magic with them things on him.

It wasn't just the one guy.  There were four of them, and they'd got Felix off the horse and cuffed, and the three who weren't the asshole holding the knife on Felix were stalking toward me like they were planning to fuck me up good.  I had the advantage being mounted, so at least my leg wouldn't slow me down, but I was no expert on fighting on horseback and I didn't have any weapons besides. I could try to trample them, but the old mare wasn't a war horse and she probably wouldn't do it.  And besides, I could tell if I tried it the first guy wasn't joking with that knife.

"What the fuck do you want?" I asked, steadying my horse with me knees.  Too much to hope that they were just robbers; robbers wouldn't carry around hocus-proof cuffs.

The first guy, who was tall and had black hair cropped short to his skull and eyebrows almost as thick as Lord Giancarlo's, said, "You might as well get off the horse, Fox, before we yank you off."  Shit, if that's what he was calling me, that meant these goons knew exactly who we were and came all the way out here just for us.

"If you're gonna kill us, just do it already," I said, because what the fuck else was I going to do?  I didn't think that was what they were after, though, because why not just off Felix right away?

Eyebrows laughed, and pulled Felix's hair tight to get the knife closer to this throat.  Felix wasn't saying anything, and he didn't even look  _ scared _ .  He looked like--  Sacred fuck, he looked like he  _ wanted _ to get his throat slit.  "Killing you is the backup plan," Eyebrows said.  "Kolkhis don't want you dead if you don't gotta be."

Kethe, what a fucking idiot I was to think that it would have ended when we left town.  I'd fucked up Kolkhis's plans good, and she wasn't about to let that go if she could do anything about it.  She'd let me go once, and wasn't going to make that mistake again. "I ain't going back to her," I said. The other three goons were getting closer, one of them twirling a thick baton, one flipping open a knife, and the last cracking his knuckles.

"Keeper don't want you back anyway," the kid with the knife said.  He was probably the youngest of them, and he was probably the one Keep-- Kolkhis sent along to make sure her job got done by the guys she'd hired.  "She just wants to make you pay."

"I ain't got much money," I said, more to buy time than anything.  I couldn't see a way out, though, not with the guy holding that knife on Felix.  I wasn't fast enough anymore to stop him before he killed Felix, and it was clear as day that Felix wasn't gonna help himself.

"Get off the damn horse," Eyebrows said, "and I'll tell you exactly what it is that she wants."

I got off the horse.  There weren't no better choices.  I still had the knife in my boot, and I could grab Jashuki out of the saddle bag pretty quick, as long as I stayed close enough.  I wasn't getting very far without it in any case. "That's better," Eyebrows said with a sneer. "Kolkhis gave me a letter she wrote for you, but she told me you're too dumb to read, so we'll have your brother here read it for you.  Right?"

He jostled Felix's head a little by the hair, and Felix's eyes narrowed like maybe he was pissed enough to do something about this, but he said, "Alright, but I can't hold it if you're grabbing my elbow like that."  Eyebrows just laughed and waved us closer. The goon with the baton looked like he meant business, so I started to pull Jashuki out of the bag. I'd feel better with it anyway.

"Hey, watch it!" Knuckles said.  "You ain't pulling no weapons on us."

"It's a cane," I told him, giving him a nasty smile.  "You want me to walk over there, I need my cane. I'm a crip, ain't Kolkhis told you?"

"Take it, but do it slow," Eyebrows said.  I pulled Jashuki out way slower than I needed to, just to piss him off, then followed the goons closer.  It felt a little better being closer to Felix, even if I couldn't come up with an idea to get us out of this.

Knife Kid took a folded paper from Eyebrows's coat and held it up in front of Felix, who cleared his throat and started to read.  "You were always my favorite, but some things can't be forgiven. Still, because I loved you, I'll give you one chance to escape with your life.  Do what Brandel tells you, and you and your brother will go free. I'll consider it payment enough." Felix looked at Eyebrows -- Brandel -- and said, "Well that was spectacularly enlightening.  Do tell us what sort of torture you have planned." He was doing that kind of sweet-poison tone and I could have kissed him, I was so glad to see he wasn't still off in his own head.

"You shut your mouth," Brandel said, pressing the knife to Felix's throat again.  "Kolkhis said if you're gonna be an esclavin, you gotta learn where your place is," he said to me with a leer I really didn't like the look of.

Then, he dropped the punchline.  "Getting fucked by your obligataire."

I must've let something show on my face, because Felix took one look at me and flinched away.  Fuck, I knew how he felt about it, and he knew how I felt about it, and somehow Keeper knew how we both felt about it too, or she wouldn't be doing this.  "If I do it, you'll let us both go?" Felix asked. His voice was still a little sharp, but there was a little shaky note in it that let me know he knew exactly how much I hated that he was even thinking about it.

"That's the deal," Brandel said.

"I know better than to trust people like you," I said.  I used to  _ be _ people like him, and I wouldn't've trusted me.

"Let's put it this way," he said.  "You put on a good enough show for me and my friends to enjoy it, we might feel a little more kindly toward you.  Oh, and Kolkhis said it doesn't count unless you both get off."

"Mildmay," Felix started, and I shook my head at him.

"No.  There's gotta be something else.  You want to know her secrets? Wanna know how to get into the Mirador without nobody seeing you?  You don't got anything I could do for you that's worth more than this?" Knife Kid might be one of Keeper's kids, but these other guys were just hired thugs, and hired thugs always go for whoever pays them the most.  I didn't have money, but that didn't mean I had nothing to bargain with.

"I ain't getting on Kolkhis's bad side," Knuckles said.  "Jimmy's gonna report back to her everything that happens here."

"You won't get out of this one, Fox," Jimmy said, flipping his knife in a showy move that Nikah had used to make fun of me for.

"You got two choices," Brandel said.  "Fuck, or we kill you both. I don't give a shit which one you pick."

"Mildmay," Felix said again.  "Let me fuck you." And fuck, he had those cuffs on his wrists but they didn't do shit to stop the obligation d'ame from slamming down on me.  He couldn't cast new spells but I guess he could keep using the ones that were already out there, and I'd used up all my ability to resist it by not killing Isaac Garamond.  I couldn't read his skew eyes but I couldn't do nothing to stop it either.

"Fine," I snapped, letting him know just how pissed I was about this.  "But you're gonna have to make me."

Felix looked at Brandel.  "I don't see how you expect me to do this with your knife at my throat," he said, calm as you please.  "And if you want me to make him come I'll need oil. There's a jar in my saddlebag if you don't have any."

All at once I remembered him saying,  _ I'll even admit that I think I could make it good for you _ , and it sent a cold shiver through me.  I didn't want this, and Felix knew it, and I sure as hell didn't want him to make it  _ good _ .   _ You let Keeper make it good _ , a little voice said in the back of my head, but Kethe, this wasn't the same thing at all.  Was it?

Brandel gestured at the goon with the baton, who went digging around in Felix's saddle bags.  "I can't find shit in here," he grumbled, but eventually he pulled out a little jar that I didn't even remember seeing Felix pack.  I guess it wasn't the kind of thing he'd've wanted me to see, but I was still surprised. Probably more at the idea that he was planning on fucking anyone on this trip up to Corambis, given how the last time he fucked someone it was his ex-lover's murderer, right after doing the murder.

"You gonna cooperate, or do we gotta hold you down?" Brandel asked me, and before I could answer Felix said, "He'll cooperate.  Won't you, Mildmay." It wasn't a question -- it was a command. I jerked my head in a nod, but didn't say nothing.

"Now, if you'll  _ let me go _ , I'll do what you've asked and we can part ways," Felix said, in that snippy kind of  _ I've-had-enough-of-your-shit _ voice that meant he was all the way back from wherever he'd been when he was trailing behind me the past few hours.  Brandel gave him the hairy eyeball but he took the knife away from Felix's throat.

"Get moving," Brandel said.  "We ain't got all day."

Felix came over to me as slow and steady, but I could feel the way he was keeping himself closed off.  His bound hands came up to my belt, and I grabbed his wrists before I could think better of it. "Let me do this," he said, with the binding-by-forms behind it, and my hands fell away.  I didn't know what he was gonna do -- just take off my trousers and do it right here? Make me lie down? I didn't know how he was gonna do what they asked because my cock was limp as a wet sock.

Then Felix got on his knees and I understood.  He opened up my trousers and didn't even bat an eye at the guys watching when he took my cock in his mouth.  Everything about this was wrong, but I couldn't push him away, couldn't make him stop, because he'd told me not to.  I knew Felix was a whore when he was a kid but even though his life had gone to shit these past few weeks he'd clawed his way up to being something  _ more _ , and now here he was on his knees on the dusty road sucking my cock for an audience, and powers and saints, I was starting to get hard.  And I wasn't molly, and I didn't want Felix, but he had this trick with his tongue and he could take me down all the way without even blinking and my cock didn't care about him being a guy or there being four others watching us.

"Get on with it," Brandel said when he'd got me all the way hard, and when I looked over, he was rubbing himself through his pants.  Maybe Felix was used to guys jerking off watching him have sex but I sure wasn't; I looked away and didn't look back, but that just meant that I had to look at Felix instead.  He took his sweet time about pulling off my cock, letting it go with a wet pop. I hated the fact that he was better at that than Mehitabel or Genevra had been.

"Get on your hands and knees," Felix said.  Now that he was sitting back I could see that his cock was hard in his trousers, just from sucking me off.  He'd forgotten to put the binding-by-forms behind it, though, so I just stood there and stared at him, waiting for him to make me.  I saw the moment he realized it, and his face flickered with something that almost looked like grief before he got his mask back in place.  "I said, get on your hands and knees," he repeated, this time with the command.

The dirt was hard and there was a pile of horse shit not five feet away from me, but I did what he told me.  I got on my fucking hands and knees and Felix pulled my trousers down to my knees, and I didn't want to think about what he was gonna do next but there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop it.  My heart was beating rabbit-quick in my chest, and I was  _ scared _ , but I had to believe that whatever he was gonna do wasn't going to hurt, at least not in my body.

I jumped when he put his hand on my ass, and one of the goons laughed.  Closing my eyes and gritting my teeth, I dropped my head down low and just waited.  There were some sounds behind me, and then Felix's hand was back, slick with the oil, touching me somewhere nobody -- not even Kolkhis -- had before.  "Relax," he ordered me, and my body did what it was told somehow. Thanks to the magic, I guess, and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or to scream about it.  Then his finger was inside me, and his other hand was on my cock again where he could barely reach with the cuffs, also slick with the oil and stroking me to keep me hard with a steady, sure touch that he must have learned turning tricks.  How many times had Felix fucked someone for an audience, back when he was a whore?

Someone was breathing hard, these loud, raspy breaths, and it took a minute to realize it was me.  I started reciting Jeniard's Lover in my head, mouthing along to the words, because it gave me something to focus on other than the feeling of Felix's fingers -- there were two now -- moving inside me.  Then Felix touched some place I hadn't known existed, and my whole body flinched, my cock twitching in his hand. I lost which verse I'd been on completely.

"Fuck him already," one of the guys said.  "You waiting for an invitation or something?"

"You wanted me to make him come," Felix said.  "He won't if it hurts." Cool and logical, but I could hear the little hitch in his voice, the one that sounded more like arousal than like fear, and that just made me feel sicker.  He kept working his fingers and his hand and pressing against that spot and my cock didn't care none about how I felt about any of this, it was hard as a rock and getting closer to coming every second.

Finally, Felix took his fingers out, and I didn't know if I was relieved or terrified.  There was some shuffling, and then there was a different pressure against me, bigger and thicker and hotter, and oh Kethe, that was Felix's cock, and he said he wasn't Porphyria Levant but it sure as fuck felt like it.  He pushed past the pressure and I didn't think it was gonna fit, but somehow he slid inside and it didn't even hurt, not really, but it didn't feel all that good neither. His hand settled on the side of my hip, his other snaking around to my cock again, and then he started to  _ move _ .

I'd fucked my fair share of girls over the years, girls I was seeing and girls in brothels, but I never thought about what it would be like to  _ be  _ fucked.  Felix's hips pressed up against my ass with every thrust, and I could hear him breathing hard behind me.  My knees got pushed around in the dirt and my leg was aching, but Felix kept going, his hand getting tighter on my cock.

"Yeah, there you go, fuck him good," one of the guys said, and another said, "This'll teach you that when you fuck over Kolkhis, you're the one who gets fucked."  I reminded myself to go back to Jeniard's Lover, which I just kept starting over every time I lost my place.

And I was losing my place a lot, now, because Felix was hitting that spot with his cock, and his hand was twisting over the head of mine, and I could hear his breath picking up like he was getting close, and powers, so was I.  "Mildmay," he said, his fingers digging into my hip, "come." And it was the obligation d'ame and his hand on my cock and I did, I came just like he told me to with his cock in my ass face down in the dirt in the middle of the goddamn road.  He let go of me and stopped fucking me and then let out this little hitching gasp and came on my back, hot and wet dripping down my ass. I think at least one of the other guys came too, though I didn't turn around to look.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked.

Brandel snorted.  "It'll do. I  _ was _ gonna beat the shit out of you, too, Fox, but your pretty hocus brother puts on a show better than any whore I've ever seen.  You oughta thank him for it."

I could hear them walking around, though I didn't dare look and I was so angry and sick and I don't even know what that all I could do was just stare at the ground and how there was dirt getting under my fingernails.  One of them spat at me, but he missed and just hit the ground. "They're leaving," Felix said, and when the sound of their footsteps had disappeared, he started wiping me up with something. Probably the monogrammed handkerchief he kept in his vest pocket, and I almost laughed at how this wasn't at all what that handkerchief was supposed to be used for.  "You can get up," he said after a while, like he'd forgotten the last order he gave me was to get on my hands and knees.

I moved slowly, kneeling up and pulling up my trousers first, not wanting to look at the wet patch of dirt under me that was the evidence of what had happened.  I didn't want to look at Felix, neither, so I just found my horse and swung my leg over her, then tried not to wince because my ass was sore.

"Mildmay," Felix started, but I cut him off.

"Let's get the fuck out of here."

***

We didn't talk for the next hour, until Felix finally said, "Will you stop pretending you're not in pain and get off the horse?  We can make camp early."

I didn't want to admit that he was right, but riding the horse was getting more and more uncomfortable.  I pulled my horse off the road into a clearing, still not looking at him. I'd been trying to make sense of what happened but I just couldn't.  Why had Felix given in that easily? How had he let them get those cuffs on him in the first place?

I unloaded my saddle bags and turned my horse loose to graze, then started unpacking the bread and cheese we'd bought that morning in the last town we passed through.

"Can you at least help me get these cuffs off?" Felix asked, and shit, I'd forgotten about the cuffs entirely.  But I don't know that I  _ wanted  _ to help him just then.  "If you want me to start a fire I'll need to be able to use my magic."

" _ Fine _ ," I snarled, and grabbed my lock picks.  I didn't look him in the eye, but I forced the lock.  His wrists were rubbed raw from the cuffs. I started to take them off, then stopped halfway.  "Why did you do it?"

He flinched.  I looked up at him, which made him look at me.  "What choice did I have?"

"You burned Strych alive.  You put Isaac Garamond out of his fucking head.  And you let a couple of half-centime goons get the drop on you without putting up a fight at all?"  I was yelling at him, and he was flinching back a little, like he had when he thought I was his keeper in the middle of the grasslands, but I didn't stop.  "You  _ let _ them cuff you, and you didn't even give me a chance to get us out of it.  Why did you do it?!"

" _ Because I'm a monster! _ " Felix shouted.  "Haven't you figured that out by now?  Haven't I done enough to you for you to see that?"  He pulled his wrists away from me and tore the cuffs off himself.

All at once, I got it.  That look in his eyes made sense, and the tone in his voice, and  _ fuck _ , he hadn't been willing to let them kill me alongside him for heresy even though he thought he deserved it, but I guess he was willing to rape me so I'd hate him enough to let him die.  And the thing was, it almost worked. I did hate him for it, just like I hated him for making me murder Vey Coruscant. But I loved him, too, and I didn't know which one of those was more important.

Felix was looking at me with his eyes all wild, and the only thing I could think to say was, " _Fuck_."  When he saw I wasn't going to go after him, he kind of settled down all careful-like.  I wondered how long it would be before he tried to get himself killed again, and I wondered if I would let him do it.

"Light the damn fire," I told him.  "You ain't getting rid of me that easy."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to freosan and misswonderheart for beta!


End file.
